Biography:

Ekkehard Schall was born in Magdeburg on May 29, 1930. Begining of 1952, he worked at the Berliner Ensemble and, in 1977, became its associate artistic director.

His renowned interpretation of the role of Arturo Ui – in the Wekwerth / Palitzsch production of Brecht’s Der aufhautsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, which remained in the Berliner Ensemble program for fifteen years – helped him become one of Germany’s most important actors, enjoying an international reputation. At the Berliner Ensemble, he performed in over sixty plays and played opposite Helene Weigel in the rich traditions of the Brechtian stage. The French newspaper, Le Figaro, compared him to Victor Boucher and Charlie Chaplin. Schall first performed in the US in two Brecht-Weill programs in the mid-1980s.

Schall’s first film role was in Schlösser und Katen, directed by Kurt Maetzig, but he became known to a wider audience in his role as Dieter in Berlin - Ecke Schönhauser, one of East Germany’s most important youth films.

Schall celebrated the work of his father-in-law, Bertolt Brecht, in many television productions, as well as in his book of poetry, Bukower Barometer (Transl. The Barometer of Buckow). More recently, he acted in productions at various German theaters and in Ulrich Mühe’s production of Auftrag, by Heiner Müller.

He was one of the speakers at the famous Berlin demonstration on November 4, 1989, that called for reforms in East Germany. 

Ekkehard Schall died in Berlin on September 3, 2005.

Bibliography & More:

Schall, Ekkehard. Bukower Barometer (trans. The Barometer of Buckow). Berlin: Insel Verlag. 2002.